The average (or presumably median) European would have been illiterate and would not have ventured more than a few miles from their place of birth within their lifetime, so if news of newly discovered lands reached them, it would have done so very slowly, and been distorted into implausible folktales of marvels and monsters.
this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
45 points (92.5% liked)
Asklemmy
44128 readers
414 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
I'd like to point out that the notion that most medieval Europeans never travelled beyond their place of birth is increasingly shown to be a misconception. Most peasants at least visited the nearest town frequently for trade and to attend processions for religious holidays, and many made a point of going on a major pilgrimage at least once in their live. There also the fact that people were often forced to relocate because of wars and famine, went on crusades, were sent away to learn a trade, or simply visited distant relatives. The thing that didn't happen was tourism, which is how we mostly think of travel today. Here's a medievalist's perspective on it, and it's not hard to find more sources if you go looking for them: https://medievallauren.wordpress.com/2020/12/02/medieval-myth-busting-travel/
New-worlder here. We definitely have monsters.
I'm gonna start refering to myself as a new-worlder now.